More Thomas

Another day of Thomas went well.  A lot of people put in a lot of effort to make these four busy days a success, and I certainly can't begin to list them all.  A great deal of thanks is due to everyone who helped; most of them spent a lot more time on Thomas than I did.  One sad note: our old friend Larry Stone was planning to fly in from Nevada for a second weekend, but his flight yesterday was cancelled due to the airline computer snafu, so he had to stay home.

Just a few more pictures:

Meanwhile, deep in the mysterious caverns of Barn 4, a few of the regulars continued on their chosen projects, trying to avoid being dragooned into picking up trash or something.  Here Tim was getting ready to apply numbers to the 1808.

Bill was cleaning the group covers.

And Ed was working on parts for the Cleveland PCC.

Last names have been omitted to protect the guilty.

A Sunday on Sodor Tramways

Frank writes...

I spent the first Sunday of 2024's Day Out With Thomas event on the streetcar line. I started the day running the 3142; due to volunteer shortages we began with just two cars out, but additional volunteers arrived around lunchtime and that allowed us to reallocate resources. I moved to the 144, which I ran for the rest of the afternoon, and the 144 crew took out the 4391. It's always nice to see this many Chicago cars out.

Above, here's the 144 on its way back into Barn 7 late in the afternoon.

And here's your requisite crowd shot. Overall, the event seemed like it ran very smoothly on Sunday.

While I was grabbing lunch over by the future site of the gas station, I happened upon our new Visitor Center display board. Pretty nice, eh? You can learn more at www.irm.org/visitorcenter.

After operations wound down, Zach brought out a sign that was just discovered among some miscellaneous items. It's a wooden sign proclaiming "Green Road," which of course is the terminus of the Shaker Boulevard line on Shaker Heights Rapid Transit. Lo and behold, it fits perfectly in that mysterious little sign bracket between the doors of the 18. Eureka! The question now is, what role exactly did this sign fulfill? Zach speculated that when these cars ran as a five-car set, the platforms may have been too short to accommodate the entire train, so riders may have chosen which car to board based on their destination - indicated by these little signs. Or maybe it was something else. Anyone know?

After that, Zach and I loaded up the newly reupholstered seats for the CA&E curve-siders and used the new Taylor-Dunn "golf cart pickup truck" to move them to temporary storage in the 451. Above, Zach has the first load leaving the car shop.

Door-to-door, "last mile" service! Here the Taylor-Dunn takes the second load down the aisle in Barn 8. Thanks also to Greg and Bob for helping load these into the 451. As soon as time permits, I'm hoping to start installing these in the 460.

So, what else was going on? Joel was working on some maintenance items on North Shore 749 during the day. Above, one end of the car has been jacked up a little bit, just enough for the center bearing to clear the truck. The purpose was to put grease "cookies" into the center bearing to keep it lubricated.

Over in Barn 7, I saw that when Steve was out a couple of weeks ago, he got three new center doors installed on Kansas City PCC 755. This is really coming along! Three of the center doors and two of the front doors have now had their Philadelphia plywood doors replaced by correct steel doors that match the profile of the car side.

And out behind Barn 4, a number of pallet rack stringers were laid out on the tracks. At some point these will be painted, and then we'll start assembling pallet racking in the new Barn 4 extension so that we can store large items like motors, air compressors, etc., inside.

Thomas with Pictures

(Technical issues have been resolved, so here we go!)

Saturday was the first day of Thomas for this year, and everything seemed to go very well.  Ticket sales have been very good, so the first trip of the day was moved up to 9:30.  Operations went smoothly, due to the expertise and experience of our Operating Dept. members.  It's always nice to see the campus crowded with people.  And Barn 3 was open so visitors had some cars to go through.

Percy

Percy's helper!

Thomas

By the way, here's a stack of reupholstered seats for the CA&E St. Louis cars.  Jon Fenlaciki has been doing yeoman work transferring these to and from the upholstery shop:

Since I was on Streetcar Relief, I had some free time.  And I visited the C&NW Historical Society building for the first time.  

Inside the visitor's center

Just a tiny fraction of the documentation they possess

Ticket window from the old North Western terminal in Chicago

  The people there were very helpful and friendly, and I got a tour of the back rooms.  There are some nice displays of various sorts in the front, but behind that are the archives, with an astounding amount of historical documents, much of it going back to the 19th century.  There are photographs, detailed maps of every town the C&NW went through, accounting ledgers, and more.  In some cases they documented every tie that got replaced.  The volunteers are in the process of cataloging and organizing all this material.

Anyway, it's an interesting place to visit.  Right now, it's on the west edge of town, so they don't get as many visitors as they ought to.  But urban development is headed that way!

Thomas, Day One

Thomas is in full swing again this year.  On Saturday I was on streetcar relief, so in the morning I had some time to tighten up the clamps on the 460's canvas.  Meanwhile, crowds are gathering around the real star of the show.

So I found a seat and watched the parade of CSL streetcars.  Here's the 144:

And 3142:

And 1374:

Next is Thomas himself....

followed by an impressive train of six Rock Island coaches, plus the North Western combine...

and finally, our nicely repainted Rock Island Geep as a helper...

At least, that is what they want you to believe.

And here's a cheery sight: the entire south parking area, west of Lake Diamond, full of autos.

After that, I had to get to work and run streetcars.  But I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures on the web in various places.  And as always, you really need to be there in person.

Thomas, le premier dimanche

Frank writes...

The first weekend of Day Out With Thomas has now come and gone. Overall things ran fairly smoothly and, for the most part, largely as they have in recent years. One of the changes was that the Percy train was powered by diesel rather than steam. Crowd sizes were down a bit from the previous year but that seems to be the case at most Thomas events nationwide.

My post for the day was the 3142, shown above at the "Thomas stop" alongside Barn 9 before the fun commenced. The car ran flawlessly all day, making 26 trips in all if memory serves. Thanks to Dennis Matl and Jack Rzepecki who gave me breaks and, in Jack's case, helped put the car away at the end of the day.

As usual, there were four cars on the streetcar line, and due to some revisions to standard operating practices there was much less "bunching" than in the past. Besides the 3142, Bob Opal was running the 415, Jeff Obarek and Frank Sirinek were on the 4391, and Dennis Matl and Randy Allegrezza were on the 144.

I was too busy going in circles during the day to take any photos, but after everything wound down I did a bit of wandering to get some news updates. The multi-purpose building is coming along nicely, as shown, with almost all of the roof in place now.

B&G seems to have set up a "pick-a-brick" display in front of the partially completed building. Judging from the artist's renderings, I believe that all of these will be used on the building because it will be designed to appear as two or three adjoining structures of slightly differing designs.

And the Schroeder Store was very nicely decked out for July.

This is something new, a nice touch I noticed while on the streetcar line. B&G has installed a locomotive bell on a pole next to the Springfield Avenue stop at the south end of the property. There's a rope so that kids of all ages can ring the bell to their heart's content. This strikes me as a good idea, as does its remote location at the south end of the property!

And of course there's progress in the car shop as usual. The 1754 continues to come along. This may have already been mentioned here, but what's that little drain cock right underneath the retriever bracket?

And Thomas Slater showed me all of the work that is being done on CTA 4146, the "Baldy," a project that he has taken on with help from Nick Espevik, Jack, Bill Wulfert, and others. The car's interior is shown above. A lot of this has been stripped and primed, ready for paint. There's also been structural steel replacement in the wall section to the left and the seat frames have been fixed up and are ready to go back in. Additional details, like backdating the exterior door lights, repairing heaters so that the car can be used in cold weather, checking the doors and brakes, and getting the forced-air ventilation system working, are being attended to as well. Only four "Baldy" type cars from the CTA were preserved and this is the only one that is in anything like good condition, so it's a very historic car.

Another one in the bag

Frank writes...

Sunday was the last day of the 2018 Thomas event. I didn't arrive at IRM until about 3pm, too late to be of much help, but there were still people coming in the gate.

Richard, Greg, and of course Johnnie and his crew of ticket sellers had the entrance well in hand as usual. The weather reports had been dire, as they had been for all four days of this year's event, but it never did anything more than spit a little in Union - the predicted showers never really materialized. The crowd seemed pretty good despite the poor weather reports.

You're probably getting tired of seeing photos of the Thomas train, but too bad.

The streetcars in service were the usual: the 415, 3142, 144, and 4391. The Thomas train had the 7700, one Lack coach, and five Rock Island coaches, while the mainline Percy train was a rather attractive all-railroad-roof consist with the B&LE and Santa Fe combines bracketing two Lack cars and the DM&IR day coach.

I spent a little while working on cleaning old caulk and paint out of the end window frame on Shaker 18; a new piece of glass has been procured and I hope to install it soon, which will be a big improvement. The end windows on that car are big, about 34" square! Then, as operations were winding down, I moved the 36 over to Barn 7 just to get it out of the way for Monday. The 308 and 319 are supposed to be in the station around 9am so I figured I'd save my father a bit of switching. Barn 7 was home to the 309 and 321 for six or seven years, from the early 1990s until 2000, but I'm not sure the 36 has ever been in Barn 7 at all. I'm also not sure whether any of the wood cars has been on track 71, which for many years was home to the Electroliner. So here you go. Exciting, isn't it?

As I was closing the doors on 71, Bob Opal was bringing the 415 into the yard to officially close out operations on the Thomas event for this year.

And we are all set for the 308-319 to run tomorrow. Note to self, we still need to reinstall an "off 1" sign, marking where to shut off for the breaker, to replace the one that fell down. In other news, Jeff was working on more wooden platform bracing for the Michigan car while Thomas was "on call" in case of streetcars problems (there weren't any) and was working on catcher repairs on the 4410.